Fertility clinics are gearing up to open their doors to fertile couples seeking treatment as a lifestyle choice rather than a medical necessity, experts said yesterday.

Advances in medical techniques, which centre on safe and effective ways to preserve fertility, mean healthy people will routinely be able to store eggs and sperm produced in their prime for use at a later date.

The shift reflects a rise in what some fertility specialists have called the "have it all generation" who do not want to compromise between career and family. "The great problem we've got now is you can't have your cake and eat it," said Dr Simon Fishel, director of the CARE Fertility centre at the Park hospital in Nottingham.

Research is focusing on refining techniques to freeze good quality eggs taken from women in their 20s and early 30s, as female fertility drops dramatically beyond the age of 35. But recent studies have revealed that a man's fertility also nosedives with age, driving the development of methods to keep healthy sperm on ice.

"What's going to happen, and we're going to make it happen, is that a lot of people will start using IVF who don't have a fertility problem. It will take a few years to come about, but that paradigm shift will happen," said Dr Fishel.

Only a handful of clinics in Britain offer egg-freezing services and the option is almost entirely reserved for women due to have radiotherapy for cancer or who have been through one cycle of IVF and object to having spare eggs fertilised and frozen. To date, only four babies have been born from frozen eggs in the country, all with the help of the Midlands Fertility Services near Birmingham.

There are no signs yet that egg freezing has health implications for the baby, and medical experts say the safety and success rate of the procedure is improving. In standard IVF, a fresh egg has a 25% chance of leading to a successful pregnancy, but at best, frozen eggs have a 15% success rate.

"When we get to the stage that frozen eggs are safe and efficient, a proportion of our society will have their eggs frozen at a younger age and then pursue their lifestyle as they should until they want to start a family," said Dr Fishel. The treatment costing around £2,200 could see women in their 50s implanted with their own eggs frozen decades earlier.

Gillian Lockwood, director of the Midlands Fertility Services, said that storing eggs young could save a lot of women regret later in life. "By having some of their own eggs literally frozen in time they could save themselves a lot of heartache," she said. For older women, becoming pregnant is only one of the hurdles to having a baby. Miscarriage rates rise rapidly with age, reaching 40% by the age of 40. But the risk of miscarriage is only linked to the age of the egg.

Eggs are the largest cells in the human body and because they contain a lot of fluid, must be delicately dehydrated before freezing to prevent ice crystals cracking them.

Sperm are easier to freeze and store, but there is far less demand because men are fertile longer than women.

Virginia Bolton, a consultant embryologist at the assisted conception unit at Guy's hospital in London, said it will take a turnaround in women's thinking before such a precautionary approach to family planning becomes commonplace. "People don't start really thinking about it in their 20s because then, the world's your oyster. But society may well change. We may take it as given that we put our eggs on ice," she said.

Peter Braude, a fertility specialist at King's College London, said further medical advances will emerge this year allowing fertility clinics to test embryos for any disease that runs in a family. Multiple displacement amplification will allow doctors to screen embryos for genetic defects, even if the specific mutation is unknown.

FAQ

How are eggs obtained in IVF clinics? Women undergo treatment that stimulates the ovaries to over-produce eggs which are removed using a needle. There is evidence that high doses of hormone produce eggs with more genetic defects than normal.

How are eggs frozen? Human eggs contain fluid and must be drained before freezing to prevent ice crystals forming and rupturing the tissue. Antifreeze is injected to preserve the eggs, which are stored at -196C in liquid nitrogen-cooled containers.

How long can eggs be frozen for? Some specialists believe that eggs can be frozen indefinitely, but the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority says eggs can only be frozen for 10 years, except in exceptional circumstances. In the case of Emily Perry, the first baby born from a frozen egg in Britain in 2003, the egg was frozen for a few months.